Talk:R. J. Rummel

Rummel the historian
I think the article should be a bit more clear that Rummel isn't just controversial, but is pretty much a libertarian crackpot. At least that's my impression of what historians think of his scholarship, especially all the imaginative tinkering with casualty figures.

Peter Isotalo 09:07, 14 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Not true and note that reference must be provided for all statements as per WP policy. What you are saying is extremely POV and needs some very solid evidence to back it up. Needless to say your personal impression is irrelevant at best. Btw WP is not generally considered to be the place to vent one's frustrations.Xenovatis (talk) 22:08, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me, but Rummel's centrist bona fides are extremely suspect. You ask Peter to provide evidence, which I briefly considered doing myself. Then I realized that what I was attempting to do so was so self-evident as to be obvious. Simply spend an hour going through his various websites, blogs and "research". You will begin to see that virtually ALL his opinions line up with those of more well known center-right/far-right wing authors.

Further, he spends a great deal of time openly attacking the realist views that quite naturally dominate academia, as per the wing-nut right's attacks on anything-left-of-FOX media or any other source of information capable of contradicting them. How convenient. He proposes censorship of anti-war media, giving it his own spin of cousre, not the "unpatriotic" label that would give him away. He cheer-leads the Iraq War, (even Bush fer' chrisakkes!), makes no criticism of Israeli policies re: the Palestinians, etc. etc. etc. In a nutshell, the USA is right, anyone who doesn't agree is wrong..."and he can prove because he's a scholar and a peace-loving man himself!". C'mon.... It doesn;t take a genius to see what this guy is up to, and until WikiP ses it and dumps 3/4 of that bio, it will remain as a testament to the kinds of abuses that can happen when people get to direwct the writing of their own bios.

I mean...David Horowitz, when compared to this guy, looks like he might still be the left-winger he trumpets as "proof" he knows what he's talking about. Rummel is taking a page right of that very same "credibility book", posing as a centrist so his right-far-right views have more credibility among his designated target.

Further, I notice the article itself mentions, then qualifies, his Nobel nomination. A short tour of his websites will instantly reveal that he doesn't make the same qualifications anywhere himself, but still attaching his supposed nomination to virtually everything he does. Now I ask you....even if you still somehow thought his views align with the mainstream after matching them to their most vocal proponents in the political arena (which I submit is impossible)....what kind of a man plays fast and loose with the truth about something as hallowed as the Nobel Prize? A propagandist perchance?

You betcha! Clip 'em, and clip him deep!

--Mycos (talk) 22:34, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This discussion is just personal opinions on Rummel's views. Which part of the article is being debated here?  Is it just whether he counts as a "historian"?  That seems very minor considered that he worked in a political science department rather than a history one.  The fact that he's had a large number of articles in academic journals shows that he has some recognition in that field.  Let's keep personal attacks out of this.  Epa101 (talk) 22:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The "parts of the article I'm talking about" are made clear by simply looking at his views on politics. He claims to be against invading a country solely to throw out a dictator, but he's all for the Iraq War against Saddam Hussein. If you go through what he says he's for, each and every policy lines up not only to the right, but to the far right...with the neoconservative right. If one keeps that thought in mind then reviews what and where his policies stand, they are precisely the claims put forward by those clamoring for war by first arousing patriotic fervor while downplaying the facts of the matter. For instance, we may not like who the Palestinians elected, but they elected Hamas nonetheless. His form of democracy is the same one Pinochet had in mind when he named his Independant Democratic Union after tossing out Allende who was also elected, whether we like it or not. Apparently being a socialist automatically precludes a goverbnemnt from being a democracy, despite the numerous socialist parties in democratic Europe.

You will notice that he opposes the UN and wants a replacement body. Only the USA and Israel share such a deep antipathy toward the UN, and for reasons that are made clear when one looks at who they are censuring for using military means to overthrow and "spread democracy" by first ensuring no left-of-center governemnts unionise all the "free-market capitlisms' profits away. Haiti is another example of where an election has been trumped by US strongarm tactics. Look at the Guatemala piece here in Wikipedia (from '54 to '66) will show. Arbenz's overthrow is well known yet Rummel doesn't include that either.

You wil note on his websites that he also prefers to use CIA or US State Departemnt statistics than those of the WHO, the UN, Amnesty International, or any other group having international credibility, particularly when those numbers detract from te "just spreading democracy" mantra of stated US policy. If this happened just 'here and there' it wouldn't be an issue. People get things right, people get them wrong. But his mistakes are 100% aligned with State and Pentagon "hawk" claims, and never falling on the side of realist critiques of these policies. Even there you see criticism of academia as being influenced by leftists. This too is perfectly in keeping with David horowitz's "Academic Freedom" crusade, an attempt to have creationism and his own far-right views taught alongside the widely accepted consensus views as if facts and religious faith are interchangeable because they are all just mere "opinions" in the end. His vehement denounciation of communism and/or socialism reveals another clue to his strong right-wing views despite his stated MOTR "nice guy" persona.

I don't know what his views specifically is on universal healthcare, but I'm willing to wager the moon that he strongly opposes it despite every other First World capitalist nation accepting it's value as a both a more fair and ultimately cheaper system in the long run. He is very clearly Pro-American biased in his views despite his claims to be merely pro-democracy. Therefore, his write up here should reflect my own and other's more commonly held view of deep scepticism (if not actually pointing it out) by removing declarations that he has stablished the facts on claims i.e. "he has shown" and replacing them with phrases like "He claims in his work...". That's not too much to ask is it, given the veracity of what I say? --Mycos (talk) 04:59, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm sure that there are many people who agree with you about his work, so let's quote them. This would be best placed in the "Criticism" section.  If a source can be found that takes apart Rummel's work on these grounds, then it can be mentioned.  What I'm concerned about is repeating your analysis within the article might violate the policy of No original research.
 * I did remove the part that said he was "centrist", seeing as no citation had been provided and I've never seen his use of the term.
 * Just for the record, he is against universal healthcare. He is not a creationist though; he claims not to be religious.  Epa101 (talk) 18:26, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

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reduction
This sentence "Rummel explains that his works are "about the sheer magnitude of democide, and the democratic peace that underlies [President] Bush's foreign policy as the solution to democide and war" is a reduction of Rummels position. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.165.67.8 (talk) 06:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Exceptions to Democratic Peace
Some critics say there are exceptions to Rummel's claim that the number of wars between democratic countries is zero (see List of wars between democracies). Please help me to find a neutral, unbiased way of describing the views of these critics.

Do we make a section in Democratic peace theory, or an entirely separate article, or both? What would be a good title for such a section or article? --Uncle Ed (talk) 15:13, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Obsolete data
Why this article, on chapter 'criticism', mentions only Conquests pre-1990 estimates on number of Soviet victims? Conquest himself has revised down his estimates after archival information became available after fall of Soviet Union. It seems strange that not only Rummel has not covered that new information at all in his research, it is not covered in this article??--Mikoyan21 (talk) 22:14, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I understand that this is a late reply. However, to address the topic:  We can't use original research by applying the Soviet archives to Conquest's work and then making judgments about Rummel.  Moreover, Conquest did not revise his estimates downward; instead, he became convinced that 20 million Soviet citizens killed by Stalin was very nearly correct, as opposed to being a rock-bottom minimum.  Moreover, the number of homicides documented in the Soviet archives represents only a fraction of the total number of excess deaths.
 * Note that the Soviet archives are sufficient to debunk deniers like Anderson and Silver, who claimed in 1985 that the death toll under Stalin in the thirties was between 0.5 and 4.8 million. In reality, the Soviet archives record 5.2 million homicides in the thirties, while their (formerly suppressed) census data yield a total of at least 9.7 million excess deaths attributable to the Stalinist regime in that period.   This study by Steven Rosefielde shows, using demographic analysis, that the total number of Soviet citizens killed in the thirties could be two to three times greater than the officially recorded figure of 5 million.  And there is more:  Demographic analysis usually results in a conservative figure, and even the formerly suppressed population estimates were probably susceptible to double-counting (which Conquest alleges could have been as high as 3.5%).  During the famine years of the early thirties, according to Andreev et al., as many as 5.5 million children were excluded from the official crude birth statistics, thus reducing by up to 5.5 million the expected population growth which is used to calculate excess deaths.  With that in mind, Stalin may have killed over 15 million people in the thirties alone, and even more during WW2--plus a decent sum  from 1945-53 and in the twenties.   Add in democide in foreign countries, the civil war, Lenin, and all of Stalin's successors.  Clearly, Rummel's figures are not impossible.  It is safe to say that the communist death toll in the USSR can be counted in the tens of millions.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:34, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
 * the king killed 3 million in Ireland, should we add this? I a being serious as you apparently are. Really, I  can't stand people like you and Rummel who make martyrs out of mass murderers by (in Rummels case at least) inflating already huge numbers for propagandist purposes giving the lost followers of the likes of Stalin a chance to rebute. 46.59.36.37 (talk) 23:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)


 * That's a lot of "could be"s. The obsession with inventing ever higher totals of people that the evil commies killed is ultimately driven out of a desire to trivialize the holocaust. The definitions used are incomprehensible and are applied in a biased manner.2601:140:9500:7F00:CB4:BE33:C2F7:22B8 (talk) 00:06, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Louis Proyect criticism
There seemed to have been an obvious POV exclusion of the Proyect criticism with summaries like "Given Chomsky's status as a fringe communist apologist" and that it's not "An email or something from 'Marx Mail...'" The author is Louis Proyect and it's a valid source. CartoonDiablo (talk) 02:46, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Who is Louis Proyect? What is MarxMail.org?  Can you establish this as a WP:RS?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 02:49, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Source reliability questions can be answered by the reliable sources notice board. We have a bunch of people who are pretty expert in wikipedia's sourcing standards regarding 20th century mass mortality incidents and the academic criticism thereof.  The RS/N suggested question formatting allows editors to quickly investigate and respond. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:03, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * CartoonDiablo, can you please comment here and explain if this work was self-published or what makes it a WP:RS?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:11, 16 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Contentious self-published materials can only be used in BLP if they are published by subject of the article (Rummel). Removed. My very best wishes (talk) 05:32, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Rummel passed away
I am deeply saddened to inform that Professor R. J. Rummel passed away on March 2, 2014, according to a message on his website. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html I would be grateful if someone could edit the page accordingly. Leandrocaracol (talk) 00:24, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I have added the date of death from a newspaper obituary, and changed the present tense verbs relating to him in the article to past tense. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:22, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'm really grateful for that. Leandrocaracol (talk) 02:05, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:35, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Sack of Beijing
The article refers to U.S. involvement in the Sack of Peking. However, this term is confusing. It could mislead people to connect the term with the Sacking of the Summer Palace during the 1860 Second Opium War. However, the incident with the killing of potentially hundreds of people are the incidents in the Battle of Peking (1900). The U.S. was involved in the latter event, not the former. I have made the appropriate article link correction.Dogru144 (talk) 23:10, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

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PoV in section of this article
In section Reception, subsect Democratic peace theory is the following: ... and demonstrated Rummel's "unrelenting" economic liberalism and "extreme" views on defense policy. The way in which the quote marks have been used imply the terms used are questionable. The supporting reference is behind a paywall. Is the correct quote from the reference "unrelenting economic liberalism" and "extreme views on defence policy"? Unfortunately, I'm not sure anyone can check (paywalled ref). This kind of usage of quotation marks is an actual example of misuse in the MoS. In the same para is "... a paper that warmly defends the existence of democratic peace ...". I don't think "warmly" sounds like a neutral PoV. Can anyone advise me on these two issues? Prime Lemur (talk) 18:14, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Works
Stuff that is merely self-published, especially as electronic/print-on-demand should probably not be listed. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:58, 22 August 2019 (UTC).

democide definition
User has tried to add the following to the lede:
 * Historian A. Dirk Moses states that "Rummel was uninterested in fatalities caused by democracies".

and at the same time change the definition of democide from "murder by government" to "murder by authoritarian government". From a quick glance at the democide wikipage and Rummels own definition this is simply false. Furthermore, Buidhe aims to add a relatively tangential statement that makes stylistically no sense to the lede. While it is probably true that a historian has said this about Rummel, this is clearly a controversial figure and many people have said many things about him, it is thus not appropriate to add this to the lede per WP:UNDUE. The spot for a discussion on whether Rummel correctly counted deaths by different forms of government and whether he put equal weight on democratic government vs other forms of government is clearly in the article and not in the lede. Alternatively, if you can find a way to articulate this same point well without simply adding a new sentence completely out of context to the lede, this could also work. For example we could change


 * His figures for Communist regimes have been criticized for his methodology and for being higher than those given by most other scholars

to


 * His figures for Communist regimes have been criticized for his methodology and for being higher than those given by most other scholars; furthermore he has been criticized for over-emphasizing deaths by authoritarian governments vs deaths caused by democratic governments.

Best regards --hroest 18:02, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Recent edits
I have reverted 's recent edits due to a complete breakdown in narrative coherence, coupled with the editor's tendentious edit warring over commonplace maintenance tags. It's hard to speculate if Davide King is somehow completely unfamiliar with all of the preceding text in the Rudolph Rummel subsection or if he is engaged in WP:SYNTH or if the issue is one of English-language WP:COMPETENCE, but obviously judicial executions in Saudi Arabia have nothing to do with the theory that democracies are unlikely to go to war with one another, because executions are not "war" and Saudi Arabia is not generally considered a "democracy." More importantly, Davide King's sources fail verification in that they do not, in fact, support his inference to the contrary.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:04, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, this is complete nonsense and also insulting. You are the one who completely missed the point. "... but obviously judicial executions in Saudi Arabia have nothing to do with the theory that democracies are unlikely to go to war with one another, because executions are not 'war' and Saudi Arabia is not generally considered a 'democracy'." If you actually read the source, you would find that this is not what the source says, or even what I meant to say; perhaps the issue is the placing, which is why you completely misunderstood. It is simply an example, cited in an academic source, that authoritarian regimes (Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan) have not engaged in what are termed "megamurders", while the democratic Sri Lanka engaged in politicide. As Harff says, it is "a challenge to Rudy's basic argument." This is the source with full, relevant quote: Davide King (talk) 18:09, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it should be moved after "Some critics argue that there have been exceptions to the democratic peace." Either way, this is simply a case of misplacing, not any of the insulting stuff you said, which borders personal attacks. P.S. I also reverted it only twice, not thrice (it must be clarified that the second was not a full revert because I tried to reword it and add the quote, in hope to help clarify this for you but I think the issue was simply misplacing, which caused you to misunderstood me and the whole point), and as you can see, as a discussion was actually opened, I stopped. This is all in line with BRD. Davide King (talk) 18:17, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * You seem to be saying that the source passes WP:V because it mentions Rummel by name and discusses Rummel's concept of democide. However, it does not support your proposed addition suggesting, e.g., that executions in Saudi Arabia are "exceptions to the democratic peace." Furthermore, the line about "a challenge to Rudy's basic argument" is again not referring to the democratic peace theory . Thus, the content fails verification and must stay out unless and until you are able to formulate it in a way that is consistent with the source itself and with Wikipedia's content policies.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:30, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * See my comment, before reading yours, here, which addresses your points. Either way, there was no need to be so condescending and remove it outright; the issue is mislpacing per my comment below. Davide King (talk) 18:36, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Or we can move it to the section about democide, if you think democratic peace theory is only about war. Clearly, Rummel also thought that democratic regimes were much less likely to engage in democide and killings, so I thought it was relevant to the democratic peace theory. Either way, there was no need to outright delete it; the issue is misplacing, and there is no violation about my addition. Davide King (talk) 18:34, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 4 March 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Bensci54 (talk) 16:47, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Rudolph Rummel → R. J. Rummel – The WP:COMMONNAME of this person is R. J. Rummel according to Ngrams:. Rummel used this form of his name for almost all of his books, including Death by Government, and independent reliable sources like, , and also write his name this way. (Per MOS:SPACEINITS, there should be a space between "R." and "J.".) Malerisch (talk) 23:02, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support per nom. —  AjaxSmack  02:09, 10 March 2024 (UTC)